Trumpian Loudmouths Apparently Losing Interest In Parler With No One To Play Victim To

What a shock. Parler, the site that falsely claimed that it would be the "free speech" alternative to Twitter, but who quickly realized that it was going to have to aggressively ban users as well, is apparently suffering from abandonment. As the Daily Beast reported, many of its most vocal supporters seem to have disappeared from the platform, preferring Twitter instead.

Trump superfan Bill Mitchell, who has amassed more than 580,000 Twitter followers on the strength of his outspoken devotion to the president, tweeted in late June that he was getting better engagement on Parler than he was on Twitter.

But, as of Friday, Mitchell hasn't posted on Parler for nearly a week-while posting continuously on Twitter.

And others as well:

Other conservative personalities who were part of the June exodus to Parler haven't stuck around. Allie Beth Stuckey, who has nearly 300,000 Twitter followers and styles herself as the Conservative Millennial," tweeted in June about her Parler account. But Stuckey hasn't stuck around-she last posted on Parler on July 4, even as she has posted dozens of times on Twitter since then.

Stuckey isn't alone. Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller, for example, urged his followers to make Parler accounts in the late-June rush to the site. But Miller hasn't posted on the site since June 1, even as he prolifically tweets and retweets every day on Twitter.

Meanwhile, the article notes that (just as we said over here on Techdirt) that people -- including ideological supporters of Trump and his fans -- are realizing that Parler isn't any more supportive or against free speech than Twitter. The Washington Examiner had a piece saying (correctly) that Parler is not the free speech utopia Trump allies hoped for, and other Trump supporters are explaining how Parler is "anything but" free speech supportive.

Of course, this isn't a huge surprise. The glee over Parler was mainly over the fact that assholes seemed to want freedom to be assholes for the sake of "triggering" people. It's all performative. But if the people they're trying to annoy are elsewhere, they're just playing the clown for themselves, and what fun is that?

Still, it appears that with Twitter's recent (totally justified) decision to remove accounts spreading QAnon conspiracy fan fiction, it's likely that Parler will get a new burst of life as a place to spread nonsense conspiracy theories...